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8 Nov 2016

On The Pull 09/11/2016

New comics are due to hit the shelves on Wednesday so here’s a look ahead at some of the books we’ll be picking up this week.

Matt C: Marvel have a handful of issue #1s coming out again this week, but none that really take my fancy, so I'm turning my gaze towards once more to Image for top pick from this Wednesday's new releases. Green Valley #1 was a decent debut and although it didn't bowl me over straight away I'm expecting a lot from the successive instalments as writer Max Landis has sold me on his pitch to expect the unexpected. Landis is probably best known to the wider world for his screenwriting but he really impressed me with the Superman: American Alien miniseries so I'm keen to see how he progresses as a comic book scribe. The lush visuals of the opening chapter were its main selling point but I'm pretty confident that Landis will deliver on his promise to make this a memorable miniseries. I'm only picking up three DC books now and two of them are appearing this week: the increasingly dependable Wonder Woman, which switches back to the excellent 'Year One' storyline, and the fourth instalment of All-Star Batman, where the 'everything AND the kitchen sink' approach is becoming a bit of a turn-off. I'm all for a high-octane, blockbuster Batbook, but this one's getting a little silly, and even the top tier artists they've got lined up may not keep me around much longer.

Stewart R: Very, VERY small week for my pull-list right here with just four things being picked up and I added a new #1 into that just to flesh it out a touch! First things first though as I prepare to say goodbye to one of my favourite comic book series of the past few years. Paybacks #4 is a bumper-sized ending to this terrific series about heroes forced to work under the yoke of a mysterious individual in order to literally 'pay back' the funds they used to provide their powers and abilities. Writers DonnyCates and Eliot Rahal, along with talented artist Geoff Shaw, have produced a book that has tension and laughs in equal measure and looked at the superhero genre in a fresh, tongue-in-cheek style which really has resonated with me. I'm pretty sad that things are coming to an end on Wednesday - no, not a reference to the US elections - after surviving the switch across publishers, but I'll ever carry a glimmer of hope that this fine collaborative group may revisit their creation again in the future. That aforementioned #1 happens to be Namesake #1 by Steve Orlando and Jakub Rebelka, a tale of separate worlds, Earth and Ektae, that exist in the same plane for just a short time every seven years and where one child of both worlds is on a mission to put his father's ashes to rest before the worlds part. There's mention of alchemy and 'psuedo-science' in the blurb, but it's the sombre, unexplosive nature of that story that has me interested to see what it might hold. So, the other two titles on my list this week? Mosaic #2 and Daredevil #13. Yup, that's right, not a single Image book to be found in my pull-list for a Wednesday! Never expected that these days...